Ahrens Editions

Las Vegas, Nevada; often referred to as Sin City; is known for its over-the-top casinos and its overabundance of adult entertainment venues.

The fabulous and famous Las Vegas strip is a 6-kilometer long stretch of tourists, street performers and sex solicitors. The strip offers a flashy, plastic escape to must-see cities and destinations, such as Venice, Paris and New York. It is a place for adult fantasy and for disney-esque time travel; where it is possible to visit ancient Egypt and Greece by day, and tropical or erotic destinations by night. Not only a destination for gamblers; Las Vegas is also geared toward the family vacation, offering amusement parks and animal habitats housed directly inside the casinos.

The more historic Fremont Street area is bejeweled with the city’s original neon signs in effort to revive Las Vegas’s neglected downtown core. To draw in tourists — sponsored in part by the collection of the Neon Museum — these signs have been restored and placed around downtown Las Vegas. The rest of this extensive neon sign collection will soon be on view at the Museum’s Neon Boneyard.

Las Vegas’s surrounding area includes Red Rock Canyon to the west, and small ghost towns like Nelson and Eldorado, located just east of the city limit. Nelson and Eldorado were both old mining towns that have cleared out since the gold mining was stopped. Now instead, the town’s sites are frequently used as film sets. The last movie to be shot there was “3000 Miles to Graceland”. And as there are no longer any stores or restaurants in these towns, the residents will do all their shopping in Las Vegas and; out of necessity; have learned to make-do without.

Less Vegas by photographer Mauro D’Agati is vacation photo album of ten days spent in and around Las Vegas.